Articles

Navigating Through Southwest Florida’s Seven Distinctive Enclaves

Explore Southwest Florida's Natural Wonders

Southwest Florida is known for pairing the fun in the sun lifestyle with hand-crafted cocktails and culinary delights! Bartenders of the favorite spots around town plated up their favorite duos as part of sharing Local Flavors of the sunshine state.

Southwest Florida: A Golfer's Paradise

Southwest Florida Rebuilds And Renews With Robust Vigor And Freshness

We have our share (and then some) of headlining attractions — from superlative beaches and golf courses to top-notch cultural attractions, shopping, restaurants and festivals. Instead, SWFL Insider takes you to our best local secrets, those hidden gems shy of the limelight.

They slave over flaming gas stoves and spend their spare time balancing budgets and dreaming about food. Our kitchen warriors: Where do they go when it’s time for someone else to do the cooking for them? We talked to seven Southwest Florida chefs to find out.

SPRINGTIME IS BASEBALL TIME IN SOUTHWEST FLORIDA

Vandy Major has worked throughout Southwest Florida as a photojournalist, event photographer and portrait specialist since 2004. Her work has been published regularly in Florida Weekly since 2010. She has covered more than 3,000 community events, from red carpet galas to fund-raising fishing tournaments, and has received first-place awards from the Florida Press Association and national level recognition for her tourism magazine covers. Until Hurricane Ian destroyed her longtime home, she lived on Fort Myers Beach, which is where, pre-storm, she took these photos.

Describing himself as a “freelance camera shutter opener/ closer,” Punta Gorda resident Jerry Beard shoots for the worldwide wire service Zuma Press and is a Shutterstock contributor. His work has appeared on ABC Network News and in the UK Sun, among other places. Locally, he shoots for Florida Weekly and the Babcock Ranch Telegraph. He is currently taking an advanced photojournalism class taught by Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Greg Marinovich through the Harvard Extension School. “This is my most important thing,” he says about his three class projects that address issues of social importance in Southwest Florida. He captured the image of the poolside pelicans, top, at the Peace River Wildlife Center in Punta Gorda this past January. Below far left, a drone shot of Fishermen’s Village, also from January 2023. And below left, a performance of the Punta Gorda Symphony at the Center for Performing Arts in March 2020.

Lifelong Floridian Reagan Rule, a 2002 graduate of Florida Gulf Coast University, has studied broadcast journalism, advertising and public relations, all of which now influence her work in commercial and marketing photography. Her work has appeared in Harper’s Bazaar, the Wall Street Journal, Gulfshore Life, Gulfshore Business, Naples Illustrated, Florida Trend, Home and Design Magazine, Miami Living, Florida Home Builder and Noblehouse Magazine.  Clockwise from above: Her favorite shot of the Naples Pier is from 2018, as is the shot of Archer the Dascshund — “He’s a lot more gray now,” she says — on the beach near Delnor Wiggins Pass; she captured the night-blooming San Pedro cactus in her Naples yard in July 2019; and sunset on a canal in Naples Park is from 2017.